Cult of the Rusted Claw

November was a rough month. I fell ill twice, and once was pretty unpleasant ... but I'm back in action again.

So playing catch-up, here's my Genestealer Cult kill team completed and in all their glory.

I'm happy with the contrast on the colours, which is usually somewhere I fall over, and how well they sit on my standard basing scheme. The skintone is unpleasant, and the neutral areas with beige and white sit well together.

Cult of the Rusted Claw WIP #3

A week of mixed success, but progress has been made nonetheless.

Time taken to paint up the bases helped enormously. I have a stash of Sector Imperialis bases, and while larger scale figures like Marines sit much better on 32mm, these smaller 25mm are perfect for the human-scale figures like Cultists and Skitarii.

There's something very pleasing about seeing all the bases lined up when they're completed. Although since taking this shot, I added a little stippling to the grey for more interest.

The Cultists are coming together, and now they're on the bases with heads, it feels a little more real.

Lot of detail still to do, but these really are lovely sculpts to play with.

Cult of the Rusted Claw WIP #2

I won't bore you going colour by colour, but this felt like a reasonable landmark to share. All the major colours on the figure, and I think the combination is looking good.

We aren't aiming for competition level here, they just need to be on the table and ready to play soon as possible. Over the khaki/white mix, I've applied washes of brown, orange and sepia to pull up the detail quickly, and provide nice contrast to the darker elements of the metallics and blues.

All ten of the Neophytes are at this stage in about ten hours total, at a guess. That feels reasonable, considering some of that time has been tinkering with options. From this point, the shoulder pads need bringing up to pure white, then we need to add squad markings. After that it's picking out the individuality of the figures ... oh, and the small matter of all the heads.

Cult of the Rusted Claw WIP #1

So, the Kill Team starter set happened. Let's gloss over the fact that I've already got several other projects running in parallel. What could possibly go wrong? Anyway ... a combination of factors, but I've embraced it and want to get my Genestealer Cultists running as quickly as possible.

From the rulebook and official GW force, I really liked the look of the Cult of the Rusted Claw.

Then I saw one actually painted up by a non-GW'er (https://twitter.com/Terminatortids/status/1031486816518582272) and thought they still looked great! I'm sold on the idea, so off we go ...

Much cutting, clipping, swearing and gluing later ... I have a force assembled.

You'll notice there's a Skitarii force in the background too. Let's ignore that, and it can come as a wonderful surprise when I actually paint them up.

After priming, I realised the basecoat needed to be significantly brighter, or my planned colour scheme wouldn't work. So over the black goes a 50/50 mix of khaki and white, then it's a case of starting to fill out the darker items of clothing - starting with the boots.

Heads will remain unattached until I'm happy that the inside of the hoods are finished.

It was at this point I realised there had been an error, and there's a slightly graininess to the primer on the models. That'll teach me for using a rattlecan on figures, instead of saving the cans for scenery.

Space Hulk: Genestealers

It took a while, but I've finally finished up all the Space Hulk Genestealers and here they are ...

My test model from a few weeks back is in the first shot, three along. The blue for squishy bits and retaining a yellow head make him look unfinished compared to the others but I felt it was nice to keep him there as my reminder of how they started out. Can't recall if I mentioned it previously, but everything was glued to standard round bases to make manipulation of the figure easier, and most importantly add balance and an even surface to the bottom.

Have I mentioned how much fun the bases are? The sculpt is very satisfying to paint, as almost anything you do with them brings out another detail and makes you feel like a king among men. Between the sculpt, and the rust and verdigris special effects, they were a joy.

The Terminator pieces, scattered across bases and held in claws, are painted up as Space Wolves to match (very) WIP Terminators I started converting a few years back. Still a way out from being dusted off, but they'll be consistent when I finally get there. By accident, the Genestealer skull colouring is too similar to the helmets - I may look to revise one of these at a future point, but not for the moment.

Claws, claws, claws. There are something in the region of 400 claws of varying sizes across 22 figures. OH MY GOD, THE TEDIUM. Initial dreams for subtle layering on claws died a horrible death when I realised the magnitude of the task so they're just based in brown, couple of thin coats of bone white then washed.

The end result is very pleasing, but not sure that I would do an entire army in this colour scheme. I'm a messy painter and correcting errors with yellow isn't fun, and takes significantly longer than any other colour. However, it's a problem for another year day as all these fellows are going on the shelf until Space Hulk is next pulled out for the evening.

Final shot of my favourite three from the beautiful bunch.

Super happy with the way this set of figures turned out, but I also had a little sigh of relief at getting to the end. Next project starting shortly ...

Space Hulk: Genestealers (WIP)

Not dead, merely swamped with work, and I'm hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn't oncoming traffic.

Slow, steady progress being made on Hive Fleet Bob* and the mind numbing block painting is finished and I've started washing and adding base detail. Here's the first pre and post shots of one of the Genestealers.

* It's a holding name, but it's growing on me ... like a fungal infection.

More work to do as I still have highlights, carapace to brighten up a little, bone to work up from the base brown, skin glazes and touch ups to go, but we're moving in the right direction! There was a change of heart from the first test figure - with 22 of them sat in front of me, it was just too yellow and needed breaking up.

I've made the head the same colour as the sinew coming out through the skin to give the figure definition, and that helped considerably.

The original brighter blue I planned for the squishy bits didn't look right against the skin and has been repurposed for the tongue. Now I need to take a moment to talk about the base ...

I mentioned before about picking up a few of the Modelmates effects at Salute, read a few tutorials on YouTube and opted to throw them on the base and see what happened. We started around this point before I thought "oh hello, what's this?" as straight out the bottle it was achieving something in seconds that takes me a lot longer to achieve with normal acrylics and lots of thinned Sick Green then Hawk Turqoise.

From this point on, it went a little bananas as I liberally applied the green verdigris and the rust effect ...

The rust effect is so much science in a bottle, it's basically magic. I don't understand how it works - but it does and is wonderful, wonderful stuff and now I want to put it on everything.

Is it accurately applied to the correct locations? Heck no! That's fine by me, as the effect it generates pleases me greatly at the moment :)

Cthulhu repurposed

Cthulhu Patriarch Genestealer Bob is finally finished up, along with mini-Bob. Painted as a gift for a friend who loves his eldrich games with old gods, but wanted something different to the usual murky greens for the Great Old One.

Dropped the tripod for this shot and took it from workbench level against the black backdrop or it's hard to get the sinister browline. Opted not to paint black into the recesses, but leave those in blue and highlight up instead.

More fiddling with techniques on the highlighting and almost got to a happy place with the layering, so hopefully a bit of progress on the next one to improve further. His mini-me was a cheeky drybrush with the highlight colour and shade with Leviathan Purple on the skin.

Think the wet palette is starting to make sense too. I've got to learn to be less prissy about letting paints mix into each other and loosen up on control, it sort of naturally yields the colour mixes I want for the highlights - but it pains my orderly soul to watch all the colours just muddle into each other. Quite good fun to play with, mind.